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HALIFAX–I am swimming across the harbour when I spot my deepest fear: a bundle of semi-translucent white bits floating just below the surface.

Oh God. Is that a mass of shredded toilet paper? Have I been duped into taking a dip in what is still an open sewer?

Nope. It's just a pocket of tiny undulating jellyfish. I laugh, amused that the sea life I usually fear and avoid suddenly seems so benign.

There is much to laugh about in Halifax Harbour these days. For the first time in a generation, the beaches of this port city are safe for swimming.

It is a breathtaking change from just months before, when underwater pipes belched 200 million litres of raw sewage into the harbour every day – enough to fill Toronto's Rogers Centre 45 times over every year. The sheer disgust-level of the harbour was hard to overstate. On the wrong tide and the wrong wind, the stench could gag. The shoreline was littered with condoms and beach whistles – the euphemism for plastic tampon applicators.

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Clubs that sailed in the harbour rinsed their boats down with a solution of bleach every day. And the water itself? Filled with brown fuzzy floatables. Yep, those are just what you think they are.

Three years ago, the city launched a $300 million project to build three sewage treatment plants – in Halifax, Dartmouth and the suburb of Herring Cove. Each is designed to strain the sewage to remove particles, and then disinfect the liquid with ultraviolet light. It doesn't eliminate chemicals and metals, but gets rid of the icky stuff, and kills bacteria that make people sick.

The biggest treatment plant – in Halifax – started up last November. Suddenly two notable sights along the waterfront were gone: the spout they called the "bubbling crude" in the heart of downtown, and the ripple off Point Pleasant Park dubbed the "seagull buffet" for the permanent cluster of birds feasting on the disgusting mess.

The water cleared, the smell went away. It wasn't hard to spot the difference.

Ewa Szudek is one of hundreds of people who walk dogs in Point Pleasant Park. She also gathers rocks from the tip of the park for her garden.

"I can feel the difference," she said.

"Before the rocks were slimy and slick; I had to scrub them before I put them in my garden. Now the rocks feel clean, healthy. And the dogs, when they get out of the water they don't smell any more."

Two months ago, testing started to show that the bacteria levels at three former beaches in the city had dropped dramatically, that the water was now safe for swimming. The city has not publicized the tests. In fact they refuse to release the actual results until a report goes to city council later this month.

But CBC commissioned its own testing, which duplicated the city's rumoured results, and both Mayor Peter Kelly and James Campbell, spokesperson for the project, confirmed the good news.

"Halifax Harbour is swimmable," Kelly said in a phone interview.

He said the city still wants to test bacteria levels during a heavy rainstorm, and may wait until the Dartmouth sewage treatment plant is turned on in July before formally issuing the all-clear, but a declaration will come soon. (Dartmouth still puts raw sewage into the harbour, but currents take it away from the three tested beaches.)

"This summer we will be able to have a few beach parties," Kelly predicted.

I decided to get a jump on the crowds and plunge in this week.

It seemed like a good idea when I pitched the story to the Star, but standing on the dirty sand of Black Rock Beach was another thing. The sign is still up warning people not to swim, and the shoreline has not been completely cleared of the trash left from before the sewage treatment plant was switched on.

I brought a friend, Alan Jean-Joyce, for encouragement, and a surfboard for safety, not knowing what the currents or the tides are like at that spot. And a wetsuit – for the water is still only 8C.

Alan was way ahead of me, slicing through the water while I was still staring at scummy yellow bubbles near shore. I had to remind myself that even pristine shorelines have bubbles. I was three strokes into the harbour when I spotted a small brown fuzzy thing dead ahead.

Eee gads! A floatable!

Nope, just seaweed.

Alan was soon cavorting and frolicking in the water, dipping his head and even taking huge mouthfuls of the stuff and spouting it toward the sky like a whale.

I began to relax as the deliciously cool seawater seeped inside my wetsuit, began to savour the scent of salt on the air, the play of diamond light on the tiny waves. Black Rock Beach is tucked into the east end of Point Pleasant Park at the tip of the Halifax peninsula. It is flanked by an industrial port, and is just a short walk from downtown. I lay back in the water and stared at a giant crane loading containers on to a ship bound for who-knows-where, then glanced back at a hawk circling over the park's forest. A tugboat churned past us, headed toward the open ocean, its bow pushing a wide wake of white water toward shore.

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